Faculty
Scott Armanini (USC Marshall MBA, Marketing) is a servant leader who joined our Academy as Part-Time Faculty in 2020 teaching Entrepreneurship, Disruptive Innovation and Product Innovation courses. Prior to joining IYA he held leadership roles in venture capital (Accenture Ventures, Alumni Ventures, Samsung NEXT Ventures) and technology firms (Cisco, HP, and Microsoft – where he co-founded Avanade, a game-changing joint venture with Accenture).
In addition to serving on the Board of our Alumni Association’s Alumni Entrepreneurs Network, Scott serves as Executive Director of USC’s most impactful non-profit, Frontida Records – an award winning (including the 2021 IYA Prize for Social Impact) global B2B software company managed entirely by student interns (mostly Trojans). Frontida (caring in Greek) combines the power of Human-Centered Design and low-code software to bring affordable, easy-to-use / easy-to-customize Electronic Health Records (EHR) software to frontline health and aid workers caring for our 7 billion relatives who lack regular access to basic health services.
Frontida’s origin story was captured in the Emmy Award-winning PBS documentary “Lives Not Grades," following USC Global Innovation Challenge (CE 486) student teams at Europe’s largest refugee camp, Camp Moria (aka Hell on Earth) on the island of Lesbos, Greece. Built to temporarily house 3,000 refugees, it rapidly became the permanent home to 20,000. Health and aid workers struggled with paper records – hence the creation of Frontida’s Electronic Health Records: Software tailored to meet each client’s unique needs (workflow, reporting metrics, etc, plus local languages, customs and cultures).
Scott also advises the founders of game-changing startups including Bloomlife (AI / ML) monitoring maternal and prenatal health to improve birth outcomes; IPwe (AI / Blockchain) the global marketplace for Patents; and Verified (AI / Blockchain) the Verified ID Network; and is a member of the Silicon Valley Innovation and Entrepreneurship Forum (SVIEF) — founded by fellow Trojan Iris Lei – a leading organization facilitating relationships between US / China venture capitalists and disruptive startups. He has spoken in the U.S. and China on topics including business model innovation; creating a culture of innovation; disruptive innovation; investing during times of crisis; startup-corporate innovation; venture investment trends; and, cross-border (US-China) ventures in a era of CFIUS and FIRRMA.